La Télé (Switzerland) goes 'OneStop' digital HD with VSN

The new Swiss channel is building a brand new digital HD infrastructure covering the areas of newsroom, live production, master control and archive, from VSN.

The Vaud-Fribourg TV project (recently named La Télé), comprising 5 classic regional channels (TVRL, ICI TV, CHANNEL NV, TV Max and TV VAL) and partly owned by the Regional Government, gained its digital regional broadcast licence in 2008. La Télé intends to broadcast general programmes with a fresh and young journalism style. The ‘multimedia’ journalists should give the channel a competitive advantage in its market.

With four branches and the main technical headquarters located in Laussanne, La Télé has appointed Visuals Switzerland to supply and integrate the complete new digital infrastructure. The standard video format to be used is HDV all along the production chain. The Newsroom solution (vsnnews) includes a total of 22 seats, some of them located in the local branches and contributing (text, video, audio content) to the central system. Playout, graphics and teleprompter (all from VSN too) are fully synchronized. The associated digital archive is vsnarchive3, the new H.264-based version.

The master control features 2 vsnmatic playout videoservers and vsncg graphics server, controlling the routers and peripheral devices for a totally automated operation.

Due to the very tight deadlines, the whole system is being installed in less than one month. The operators and journalists’ training will be done in a very short time frame for the same reason.

La Télé joins Canal9 and Mediatheque Valais in the group of VSN customers in Switzerland. In fact, Canal9 recently expanded its VSN installed base with 2 MCR playouts and a graphics server, after operating a huge VSN newsroom for over 3 years now.